Dollar figures continue to rise on 5 miles of new interstate, while the state is gasping for money to fix its crumbling highway system.

State consultants Steve Wallace, standing left, and Jeff Grob, seated left, talk Connector modification at a public open house.

Photo by Robin May

The team of engineers and consultants working on the controversial I-49 Connector interstate project received a more than $10 million budget expansion, in a supplemental agreement signed with the state’s transportation agency earlier in April. Additional costs were awarded to compensate the team, led by publicly traded engineering contractors Stantec and AECOM, to accommodate work over a longer preliminary design phase and on more extensive environmental studies undertaken last year.

Over the past year, the Department of Transportation and Development declined to disclose the expanded contract for the team of nine contractors, known collectively as the Lafayette Connector Partners (LCP), while the document was still under review. The IND received the new contract via public records request.

The LCP contractors were originally budgeted at just north of $21 million for the current preliminary design phase, which is now set to end in 2019. Originally this phase was scheduled to end in 2017. Approved costs for preliminary design work (called "concept refinement" in DOTD parlance) are now set at $32,415,793.

The expanded contract keeps the LCP team on the project, a lynchpin in the state's quest to complete I-49 South, for a total of seven years and four months, roughly two and half years longer than the original 2015 contract. Overall estimated costs of the design hold pat, despite the increase for the preliminary design work, at just under $60 million.

Three "extra work letters" totaling $327,786 are included in the new figure, covering mapping work on a fiber optic system, alignment adjustments for new federally required distances from the airport runway, and studying bridge and depressed highway concepts.

The state has also increased its budget for public relations on the project, managed by Lafayette-based BBR Creative, to $2 million, more than triple the original amount allotted in the 2015 contract.

Rising costs of design are no surprise, given the magnitude of the supplemental environmental studies begun last June amidst upheaval from community groups dissatisfied with the state’s ongoing community-sensitive design process, begun in 2015.

Half way through the project’s original 18-month schedule, a semi-depressed concept was floated by an urban revitalization team housed within city government. Shortly thereafter, DOTD announced expanded studies in preparation of a supplemental environmental impact statement (SEIS) and, ultimately, a supplemental record of decision, which will legally bind and define the project’s design. Federal law gives records of decision — commonly called RODs, as in “thy rod and thy staff" — a three-year shelf life.

On top of major bottlenecks, notably over the Mississippi River west of Baton Rouge, much of the state’s more pressing needs are, arguably, in maintenance and upkeep, highlighted by a near-failing infrastructure grade from the American Society of Civil Engineers. Pushing more money toward more lane expansions will do little to solve those more immediate problems, and would most certainly contribute to rising maintenance costs over time. Of 39 megaprojects currently in priority waiting, 23 are capacity expansions or freeway upgrades, not counting new bridges.